The Ramazzini Institute
for Occupational and Environmental Health Research   

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    The editors are reconstructing Genetic Profiles to be a sharper tool for looking at genetic differences, disorders, and disease “ecologically”, that is, from a community or population perspective. Genetic tests are being devised each day that probe these differences, disorder and disease, and help define these populations. What do the tests mean? 
     Ideally, besides genomic information, Genetic Profiles should include community information: social, economic, demographic, psychological, biomedical, environmental perspectives, and the special problems every population faces in its special settings. In response to special population problems, populations also share generic or common needs for research, legislative, employment, insurance, health care and environmental protection.
     There are largely unexplored key questions of causation and protection from toxic contaminants that should be answered. There is an important difference between our ”genotype” [the result of a particular combination of genes we inherit] and “phenotype”. Our phenotype is the visible expression of a genotype in a range of characteristics, from tendencies to environmentally evoked allergies to non-environmentally-evoked characteristics such as eye color. Phenotypic characteristics may or may not appear because of an environmental exposure, or a given level of exposure. Some disease associated with genetic differences occurs, to a greater or lesser extent in response to our environment, depending upon degree and duration of exposure to both contaminants and naturally occurring toxic agents, diet, lifestyle, housing and other factors. This happens more frequently among ‘vulnerable’ or ‘hypersusceptible’ individuals in a population.
     Many environmentally associated cases of disease, such as many cancers and chronic beryllium disease, occur among workers who do not have any known genetic predisposition to the disease. For example, A.G. Knudson, Jr. estimated that individuals with a predisposition to cancer imposed by environmental variation in the absence of genetic variation, or imposed by both factors, constitute 70% to 80% of the afflicted in industrial nations.[1] The late Norton Nelson, founding dean of modern American industrial toxicology, stated the moral corollary of this scientific reality: The reduction of the frequency of human cancer from occupational exposures to an insignificant level is a practical and attainable objective … work assignments (should) be open to all persons mentally and physically capable of fulfilling the task regardless of special genetic or sex limitations … controls should be sufficiently strict so that even the most sensitive components of the population are protected.[2]
     Some members of each population are likely to have “membership” in other genetically-defined populations, creating additional shared research and protection needs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are especially symptomatic, vulnerable, sensitive, susceptible or impaired [potentially or actually]. So-called ‘hypersusceptible’ persons are usually defined by their sensitivity to a single specific exposure. Within a population of individuals, each of whom is genetically different, no two members are likely to have an identical reaction to the same level of exposure. If we consider only two dozen of the historically established biochemical markers of genetic difference [such as blood types], out of thousands we each have, except for identical twins, Gilbert Omenn has calculated that any two persons will have only a one-in-three billion chance for the same profile. Of those reactions that do occur, it is likely that most will not result in recognizable clinical disease or even marginal impairment. Moreover, the same people may be less susceptible to other agents in food, drugs, ambient air, stimulants [such as ethanol and caffeine], heat, light, radiation, and infectious agents.[3]
     Reproduced here is the Resolution On Genetic Testing, adopted by the Executive Council of the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO in Nashville, Tennessee on June 3, 1983. Subsequently, the resolution was adopted by the AFL-CIO itself and thus is basic policy for the American labor movement. Similar action has been taken by trade unions in Europe.
     Since the Department’s functions have since been absorbed into other departments of the AFL-CIO and its work is not generally available to the public, we also reproduce here key tables from Genetic Testing of Workers, the technical report upon which the resolution is based. Developed nearly two decades ago, they are still useful, albeit they will be updated and expanded.[4]
     Through the Amarillo Health Consortium, unions are assisting research now being conducted by Doctors William Rom  (New York University Medical Center) and Arthur Frank (University of Texas  Health Center at Tyler) among power plant workers in New York City and nuclear weapons workers in Amarillo, Texas. The research explores the roles of genetic differences and toxic agents in the workplace in causing lung cancer. The genetic differences may be inherited, caused by damage from a mix of personal factors and agents such as radiation and asbestos fibers that these workers have been exposed to, or a combination of all these factors. See the Amarillo Health Consortium section for more information. Screening of workers has been taking place in Amarillo and New York City. 

Table II

Table III